Looking After
by Mercury Gray
Summary: "I told her I would look after her daughters, Bard, because she knew you would be too proud to take help. And that is as true this day as it was then, which says something about how well she knew you. Your daughters love you, Bard. They only want what's best for you. And they think you need a little looking after yourself."


_Using one viewing of Desolation of Smaug, the resources at my disposal on the internet, and one very battered copy of The Hobbit, I have written a thing! I apologize in advance for any continuity errors._

* * *

**Looking After**

* * *

"I told her I would look after her daughters, Bard, because she knew you would be too proud to take help. And that is as true this day as it was then, which says something about how well she knew you. Your daughters love you, Bard. They only want what's best for you. And they think you need a little looking after yourself."

* * *

Today the sun rose, as it used to do

When its mission was to shine on you.

Since in unrelenting dark you're gone,

What now can be the purpose of the sun?

-_Today,_ by Daniel G. Hoffman

* * *

Bard checked the tiller once more and glanced through the fog at the approaching edge of Laketown. It had been a good day to be out on the lake. There had been no barrels today, but he'd brought down a full thirteen of the ducks he knew the butcher (and the gatekeep) loved. _That should keep us in bread for a week at least,_ he calculated, his eyes drifting by habit to the hidden cabinet in the gunnel of his boat where his bow was hidden for safekeeping, lovingly wrapped in oilcloth.

There were fewer bowyers then there had been of old, and men were willing to pay a pretty penny, in coin or blood, to have such a thing. The Master deemed it dangerous that some men should go about the Lake armed and some should not, so Bard hunted with his bow in secret, and kept it hidden while he was at home. Let the butcher tell them the birds were snare-caught, or brought down by a well-slung stone. No one in the Master's kitchen said a word when the birds they prepared for their master's dinner had arrow holes in their flesh. The law made no nevermind to Bard or the butcher as long as one got his stock in trade and the other got his money.

One bird for Torfred the gatekeep to keep his silence about Bard's barrel-less trip out to the lake, and ten birds for Henning the butcher at a reasonable price. That left one bird (the smallest, scrawniest bird) for the family stewpot, and one bird for Dagny, for watching Sigrid and Tilda while their father was away for the day.

Sigrid had complained that morning that if she was old enough to bake her own bread, mend her own clothes and mind her own cookfire she was old enough to stay at home and look after Tilda herself, but Bard knew that his eldest daughter enjoyed herself just a little bit when she went over to her mother's friend's house.

Dagny had stepped in all those times over the years when it was becoming apparent that though Bard was an admirable parent and could do many things with little tutelage (even if his children's clothes were clumsily patched and his kitchen smelled for many years of burnt porridge) he was not, and could never be, a woman with a woman's experience. It had been Dagny who had calmly intervened when Bain had caught a fever after falling into the lake and Bard was running around town looking for a cure half-sick with worry himself, Dagny who had made sure that Tilda's dolls were always in good repair and safe from her father's fishnet sized mending needles, and Dagny who had marched straight over to clear up the mess left when Bard had shown up at her door in the dead of night with a wild and hopeless look on his face mumbling about women and moon problems and a lot of other issues he was not in a position to explain to his growing oldest daughter.

It had started as a day there and a favor here, but Dagny's role in the lives of Bard's children had grown of late. Dagny kept bees, the only woman in town to do so, and her house at the edge of Laketown had flowers in every windowbox and a whole wall of bee-boles filled with tightly woven skeps, facing south towards the sun and the flower-heavy shore. In Bard's mind it was respectable for a woman to have a trade, and Bard liked to show all his children the merits of hard work. A day spent at Dagny's meant that Sigrid could be a girl and not a mother for a day, Tilda could run and play, both girls could learn something, and Bard could rest easy knowing they were being looked after in capable hands other than his own.

Tying up the barge at the wharf, Bard took his game-bag and, concealing it a little under his extra cloak, went and made his way to Dagny's house at the edge of town. He wasn't really concerned about who would see him here with the illicit game. Far away from the town center, folk kept themselves to themselves and kept loyalty to each other above loyalty to the law.

Small and shabby even by Laketown standards, the only clues that a different class of householder lived here were that the steps outside were well swept and slopped, and the shutters on all the windows weren't hanging off their hinges, which was more than some of the other houses here could boast. One of the shutters was open even now; a fit of giggling, girlish and womanish both, came through the open window, and Bard paused at the house's corner, listening.

His daughters were escaping him into a world he did not fully understand. Bard had begun to realize that in the last few years, as Sigrid started glancing more often in her mother's little looking glass, touching her hair at odd moments and smiling at random boys in the street. They were leaving him and the world of childhood behind, and there was nothing he could do to follow, or to help them on their road, except to let them spend time with other women – and listen at the keyholes as they did so for some reassurance that they would turn out all right.

"Now, girls, enough of that. Your father won't let you come back if you tell him I was sharing stories about him." That was Dagny's voice. Bard had a sudden desire to know what stories Dagny might possibly be sharing, but she'd been Sigrun's oldest friend, and women would talk.

"Do you miss your husband?" Sigrid was asking.

"Not as much as I should, some tell me. I was young when I married Rikard, and he had fifteen years on me. But he was kind, in his own way, and treated me as a man ought to treat a wife. Here, hold this here, Tilda, there's a good girl. Wasn't much to look at, but most men aren't. He taught me his trade, made sure I was well-housed, well fed, and well thought of in town, and well looked after when he died. Though he had nephews and cousins enough that could have taken the business."

"Then why don't you run an alehouse like Halla does? If Rikard was a brewer, didn't he have a alehouse?" Tilda asked suddenly.

Sigrid's voice was quick to follow. "Hush, Tilda, we don't ask those things."

"No, she can ask, if she wants to know. It's a story you girls should hear. The master, little Tilda, was a greedy man. He still is a greedy man, come to it. He liked my husband's ale, liked it a little too much, and wanted it all for himself. I told him no, and he gave me no end of trouble after that. He took my license, my husband's landholding, his rents, his barrels and his cooperage and he was minded to take me, too, if he could have me, to brew it all for him. I came here, and started with my flowers, and then the bees came, and I took what Rikard had taught me to mead-making. Now the Master sends his servant Alfrid begging for my braggot, and melamel, and metheglin, and I make him pay for it, and pay proudly. And he does, though he hates to part with his soft-earned silver."

That last line, at least, made Bard smile, concealed around the corner from the open window. It was well known that the Master loved a prince's life on a pauper's spending, and that there were few enough folk in town who crossed him when it came to his paying his bills on time, if they were ever paid at all. And if he wanted the old brewer's receipt for Laketown's finest ale, then he'd stop at nothing to get it. But this wasn't the story entire, at least as he knew it.

"But _why _would you let him take all your inheritance, Dagny?"

Bard found himself holding his breath. Now they came to it. He knew the truth – nearly everyone in town did – of how the Master had desperately wanted, not the ale, but the brewer's young widow, and how she'd refused him, and he'd taken everything he could steal from her afterwards to drive her towards him. It hadn't worked as the Master had thought it would. She'd given up all her ready comfort without a second thought as the price paid to keep her self-respect.

Dagny could be forthright, when she chose to be. Would she answer Tilda's question with the truth? "All things in this world are nothing, girls, compared with yourself, your soul. Let another person take that from you and you've lost all. If I had gone with him, done as he asked and brewed by Master's Warrant, and charged outrageously for everyone else, I would have betrayed my husband, and myself. I let him take my fine house and fine clothes and all else and took my mind and my hands with me here to this house, where he'd have no hold over me."

"But this house is so small," Tilda observed, probably thinking of the Master's fine residence when Dagny spoke of having once owned the brewer's impressive house.

"Aye, Tilda, but it's_ mine_," Dagny said with a smile in her voice, reassuring the young girl. "Shall we see if those candles are ready to come out of the mold?"

It was quiet in the kitchen for a time except for the sounds of work, and Bard was almost ready to come and collect them when Tilda spoke again.

"Dagny, what do you think about Father?"

"That's a question." Her tone seemed to imply Bard's youngest had caught her off-guard. There was a good-natured pause. "I think he's high-minded, and honest, and I think he's got a good set of brains in his head, and that folk in this town should pay more heed to what he says."

"But do you like him?" Tilda pressed.

"Certainly I think he's one of my friends," Dagny said fairly.

"But do you like him?" Tilda repeated querulously. "Would you marry him?"

Bard might have made a sound of surprise if Sigrid hadn't made it for him. "Tilda, mind your manners!"

"Are you an eight year old or an old matchmaking widow today, Tilda?" Dagny asked merrily. "I'll leave the decision for who your father marries up to him, and I don't think he'd have me, or anyone else. Your mother was a rare woman, and her like is not in the world today."

"But he's lonely, Dagny. And he likes your honeycakes," Tilda said, as if this made the match the most obvious thing in the world.

Dagny's honeycakes were a rare treat, Bard had to admit to himself, his stomach rumbling just a little at the thought. "Marriages are founded on less, I grant you. I know mine was." Dagny came to the window and glanced through her flowerbox. Bard tried to move back, away from the corner of the house, not wanting to be found prying, but on his way his foot hit a squeaky board, and Dagny looked up. She smiled at the look on his face, surprised and embarrassed at having been caught sneaking on his own daughters. "I think we'd best wrap up everything here, girls, I see your father coming," she said, though her expression realized he'd be there for quite some time. "Perhaps you can ask him yourself when he comes."

Bard sighed, and took his time coming around the corner, his game bag heavy on his shoulder as he knocked at Dagny's front door and she let him in with due aplomb.

"Papa, papa, will you marry Dagny?" Tilda asked quickly, taking Dagny's advice quite literally and taking both her father and her family friend off guard.

"I don't think she'd have me, Tilda, she's far too used to looking after herself," Bard said, smiling for his daughter and exchanging a glance with Dagny. "Besides, her first husband was a rich man and I don't think I'd match him."

"Was the hunting good, father?" Sigrid asked, clearly trying to change the subject before Tilda could raise what her sister guessed would be another silly question.

Bard held up his game bag, full of ducks and a few pheasant. "Which should we leave with Mistress Dagny, girls?"

"This one!" Tilda said, immediately selecting the largest of the lot, a bird that Bard had ear-marked for the butcher.

"Oh, that fine fellow deserves to go home with you, Tilda, he's far too big for my table. I've just the one of me to feed, remember," Dagny said smoothly, selecting the smallest bird with a smile. "This one will do nicely – much more my size." Her eyes met Bard's and her smile broadened a little. She knew the game as well as he did. "Well, take your wax and your candles, girls," she said cheerfully, bundling up a hefty chunk of the golden, fragrant wax for Sigrid and tucking two long, thin tapers into Tilda's arms as the girls found their cloaks and baskets. "If you come back next week with some flowers, Sigrid, I'll show you how to make that salve the baker's wife likes. Marigolds and kingsfoil and elderflowers, if you can get them."

"And roses?" Sigrid asked hopefully. Bard had to smile. Sigrid, practical girl though she was, loved the smell of roses. _Though she seldom sees them here._

"Just mind you don't steal them out of anyone's windowboxes, now," Dagny cautioned. "There's some on the shores of the lake if you know where to look. Little briar-roses will do for our work, none of your showpiece flowers from the High Gardens. Now wait outside for a moment, I want a word with your father."

Bard watched his daughters go and then turned back accusingly on his wife's friend. "You might have taken Tilda's bird," he said softly, when the girls were outside. _Those candles are a silver penny each, good beeswax and all,_ he thought to himself.

"And leave you short at the butcher's?" Dagny asked knowingly, meeting his stubborn gaze with one of her own. _I play the game too, you know_, her eyes flashed at him. "It's I who should be paying you for the loan of your daughters. All my candles set up, and the honey sieved and bottled. It's more than I could do on my own."

"You owe us nothing," Bard said quickly as Dagny moved for her little strongbox and the key on her belt, his voice rising a little in anger. "It's good for them to be taught something."

"But honest work deserves honest pay –"

"—and you've paid them, in beeswax and candles and experience –"

"Then it's done, and there's nothing more to be said about it." Dagny said finally, laying a hand on Bard's to stop him from making any sudden angry movements. "Sigrun knew how to take a gift when it was offered, Bard."

_Oh, that she threatens me with Sigrun!_ _She knows my armor and its cracks too well._ "Your gifts are too rich," he insisted.

"No gift too rich for a friend. I told her I would look after her daughters, Bard, because she knew you would be too proud to take help. And that is as true this day as it was then, which says something about how well she knew you."

Bard opened his mouth to say something, realized he had no answer for that, and closed his lips quickly. _Gods above, did Sigrun know me well_. "My apologies for Tilda," he murmured, not wanting to meet Dagny's eyes. _Is this as awkward for her as it is for me? My little bird sings her own tune sometimes, and not at the best moments. I'm not looking for another wife, despite my daughter's best efforts. And Dagny would have remarried long since Rikard's death if she wanted such a thing. _

Dagny stepped closer and took his hand, making him look up in surprise. "Your daughters love you, Bard. They only want what's best for you. They think you need a little looking after yourself," she said, smiling at his quickly hidden embarrassment. "It's me who should be apologizing. I should have known better than to talk about marriages and dead spouses in front of an eight year old." She smiled regretfully. "I'd best let you go. Thank you for the bird," she added, gesturing to the duck.

Bard nodded, and stepped outside to collect Sigrid and Tilda, waiting at the canal's edge. Evidently the two girls had been having a chat of their own while their father was inside, because Sigrid's mouth was drawn and Tilda, though silent, looked positively mutinous, glowering at her sister. None of them said anything on the walk home, and Tilda disappeared upstairs to her room almost immediately after they walked in the front door. Sigrid looked at her sister's quickly disappearing form, sighed in a manner much too old for a fourteen year old, and busied herself with dinner, checking the pot she'd left stewing on the hearth and stoking the fire up around it.

_She looks just like her mother,_ Bard thought with a slim smile. But Sigrun would have had a ready smile now, not the frown that Sigrid was sporting. _This talk of new marriages upsets her more than it would Tilda._ Bard knew his children well enough to know that much. _No one will be able to replace her in her mind._ Sigrid had been old enough to remember her mother's death, though she had been quite small herself when it happened. A new mother would mean putting aside those precious memories for new ones, and Sigrid, who had learned loyalty at her father's knee, would sooner cut away a hand than betray a memory, even to a woman who'd been dead for six years. But for Tilda, who had grown up without any mother at all except Sigrid, perhaps Dagny did seem to fit the bill quite well. _Honeycakes and loneliness,_ Bard recalled with another slim smile. _Marriages __have__ been founded on less._

"Father," Sigrid asked quickly, busying herself with one of the birds from her father's bag and expertly plucking the feathers off into a waiting bag. "_Do_ you like Dagny?"

"If I didn't like her I wouldn't send you over to spend time with her," Bard said fairly, settling into his own chair with another bird. "She's a good woman, and you could learn a great deal from her." He looked up from his bird to study his daughter, who was plucking feathers with a defensive set to her shoulders and a closed look on her face, as though she were walking into a heavy wind. "I'm not looking to get married again, Sigrid, if that's what you're asking," he added softly, trying to be helpful.

Suddenly Bard found himself with an armful of crying daughter as his oldest flung herself at her father, breaking down into tears.

"She doesn't remember…doesn't know what she…and Dagny has all these stories…and Tilda only likes that Dagny tells them!" Sigrid's speech was coming out in great emotional bursts and sobs, and her awestruck father struggled to understand her and comfort her at the same time. _Oh, but your mother was better at this, _he found himself thinking, calling to mind a whole string of childhood hurts that only Sigrid's careful touch could mend. What had she done to ease them all?

Silence. She had stayed silent, and she had listened. Which is what Bard did, brushing his daughter's hair and holding her close until the sobs subsided, offering a handkerchief when she seemed to have exhausted all her woes.

"I haven't forgotten your mama," he said finally. "You haven't forgotten her either, nor has Bain. But Tilda was a baby. Can we blame her if she's still looking for comfort when we have our memories?"

"Only I like spending time with Dagny too!" Sigrid wept.

Oh, there it was. It wasn't Tilda that was troubling his oldest daughter – it was what Tilda and her questions represented, all those questions that Sigrid had probably asked herself and then crushed down, too afraid of losing her mother once to death and twice to unfaithful memory.

"Is it…is it bad to like spending time with her?" his eldest daughter pressed, eyes full of tears. "I don't want to replace her, I just want…" But she didn't say what it was she wanted – the tears came back afresh, and father and daughter both took a healthy helping of silence before they spoke.

"Your mother would have been pleased you like Dagny. I know she enjoyed her company," Bard said evenly. Hadn't it been Dagny who stood up at their handfasting and promised to keep Sigrid steady and kind and support her in her duty, Dagny who had come around every Tuesday afternoon for tea and gossip, Dagny who had attended every one of Sigrun's childbeds and Dagny who had come to comfort the sick, fevered woman who was wasting away, too afraid to touch her littlest one for fear the child, too, would catch the same sickness that was killing her.

_She reminded me to hold Tilda when she was crying at night, _Bard recalled, the memory of the sick-room and the stink of herbs and sweat and wood-smoke coming back to him in sharp relief._ She whispered and moaned and tried to tell me all her secrets before she left. _Bard remembered those nights keenly, and his heart ached at the reminder. He had not thought about them for some time. When Sigrun was in his dreams, it was the bright, spirited woman he'd married, laughing and dancing with flowers in her hair. Seldom did he call to mind the pale ghost withering in her sickbed, chiding him for his grim looks, struggling to smile and laugh for her husband.

"Don't you worry…that you'll forget her?" Sigrid asked uncertainly.

"Never," Bard said without a moment's hesitation. "I see her when you're in the kitchen cooking dinner. I see her when Bain makes Tilda laugh, and when you braid your sister's hair, and…a dozen other things I can't remember now." He tried to smile, and Sigrid returned his smile with a watery one of her own.

"You don't have to worry about me, Sigrid. I'm not ready for another woman just yet," Bard reassured his daughter. "After all, I've two fine girls to look after me already."

* * *

Did it have a point? Nope, not really. Am I happy I wrote it? You bet I am. I've been kicking around a lot of research on beekeeping for a few months now and this was an excuse to use some of it, not to mention play around a little bit with the character of Bard, who I didn't expect to like so much.

After a brief survey of the names provided for Bard's family and the rest of Laketown, I've chosen a Norwegian/Swedish language base for the rest of the names added here.

Since Bard is shown to be at least open to the idea of smuggling during the events of DoS (if not an actual smuggler before the story takes place) I decided he needed some more illegal activities to add to his roster, hence the poaching.

Brewers in the medieval world could be quite prosperous, as Dagny's deceased husband is here. While the idea of Middle Earth liquor licensing may seem odd to us, there are rules in the Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest legal codes, which regulate tavern keepers and the products they served. During the Middle Ages, it was very common for women to be in charge of the family's brewing. Beekeeping, too, has been regulated since the middle ages, and has been practiced by both men and women.

A bee bole is a wall (or an opening in said wall) used by beekeepers to hold conical woven wicker beehives called skeps. Since bees need water, and will often congregate where they can get it, it seemed quite possible to me that they might do okay living in Laketown, provided enough sun and enough flowers to feed on.

Braggot, Melamel, and Metheglin are all different types of honey wine, being, respectively, honey fermented with hops, honey fermented with fruit, and a traditional Welsh preparation of honeywine with spices added in.


End file.
